Nigel Morgan

I first watched ‘firewalking’ in 1962 on a black and white television during one of David Attenborough’s early wildlife documentaries when he visited a remote tribe who used it as a right of passage into adult life.

How could anyone walk on red hot coals without burning the soles off their feet? To a twelve year old this was quite extraordinary and I have to say left a question in my mind which has never gone away.

50 years on I now know the answer, because I’ve done it and it’s all thanks to business networking and a chance meeting with Tracey Miller and her partner George Swift who run a motivation and coaching business called Bigger, Brighter, Bolder.

I suppose we all have a ‘bucket list’ and meeting up with Tracey has given me the chance to cross something off mine and experience a couple of the most exhilarating moments of my life.

When she told me that George was a qualified Firewalking instructor I needed to know more and that’s why I ended up sitting in a room with seven other ‘mad fools’ at the Regency Park Hotel in Thatcham in a seminar that would culminate in walking across red hot coals.

As we sat and listened and self analysed our reasons for being there and what we wanted to get out of the experience, George took us through an emotional roller coaster of highs and lows of our lives and how these influence self esteem and confidence building.

Raking over the coals

After about 2 hours we all went outside to see the fire being lit and begin to understand the magnitude of what was going to happen.

Back inside we were all mentally prepared for the firewalk but George had another challenge for us before the big one, each one of us would break an archer’s arrow simply by placing the point in the soft part of your throat with the other end wedged against a block of wood and walking onto it. Testing how strong the shaft of this arrow was by placing it between two hands and pushing was quite alarming especially when I realised the metal point would be in the most vulnerable part of my neck.

It seemed strange putting on protective goggles to save my eyes from damage when I was about to stab myself in the throat but in fact we all successfully met the challenge without injury.

With time now ticking and the fire outside reaching its hottest point the time had arrived to face the great challenge.

A mound of red hot embers greeted us and James, one of George’s fellow instructors, began to prepare the fire bed by shovelling these onto the turf. Still glowing red, a laser directed thermometer checked the temperature and gave a reading of 1300 degrees Celsius.

The fire awaits

The moment had now arrived and carefully following our instructions, one by one we walked confidently over the coals, about 4 steps, into the supporting arms of George and having any pieces of ash rinsed of with a hose.

What did it feel like, my memory was not of heat but of the sort of crunch you get walking on deep snow, yet I had walked over red hot coals which by now were around 800 degrees and still had skin on my feet and no blisters.

Knowing I may not get the opportunity again, I walked a second time and in fact when fresh coals from the fire were added to bring the temperature back up I walked a third time and myself a sneaky look down at my feet on the red glowing coals, to see what I was doing.

I walk the coals

This was a truly momentous challenge and the empowerment I achieved with that first step onto the coals cannot be adequately described in words.

How could I have expected when six years ago my good friend Nigel Morgan of Morgan PR introduced me to the power of business networking for my commercial photography business it would have led me to achieve something so personally amazing.

Anyone in business will tell you that the most important route to success is going the extra mile and keeping the customer happy by giving them what they think they want.

As a commercial photographer I know this better than most since in the digital age everyone’s a photographer and the majority of clients have a preconceived idea of how they want to look or how their product should be presented.

By listening to what they expect and guiding them around the practical obstacles I get the chance to build a relationship and show them the value of using a professional expert and establishing the magic of rapport.

This kind of personal attention is what sets small business apart from the impersonal multi-nationals who generally seem to adopt the attitude of we’ll give you what we want to, not what you need.

Having spent yesterday afternoon waiting for a British Gas engineer to carry out a routine central heating inspection; don’t you love the way they give time slots and then just before it’s due to elapse ring to say they can’t get there.

I got a call at 10 to 6 in the evening, apologising that they hadn’t been able to fit me in and offering me the first call of a 2 hour slot the next morning.

Accepting that “stuff happens” and it must be difficult to schedule so many jobs I agreed but as my allotted time disappears into the distance, I guess I’ve been stood up again.

The trouble is that this promise was pure British Gas “hot air”; they hadn’t told the engineer what they had agreed with me, so his work sheet said between 8 am and noon, he finally turned up at 10-15am, not his fault.

The main lesson we can all learn is not to make promises you can’t keep and certainly don’t lie, always be aware of the damage failing to keep them can result in.

I know that as a small business I always try to go the extra mile and give added value to my customers, if big business replicated this attitude people may be inclined to spend more with them and growth would begin to return to the economy.

The other lesson is when you do mess up, and it happens; make sure that your apology is sincere and any action necessary is prompt. “I’ll get my supervisor to call you”, just doesn’t cut it especially when they don’t bother to ring back.

Why do these utility companies spend so much on telephone cold calling and doorstep selling when they can’t supply what they offer, my list is growing Talk – Talk, British Gas, all credit to BT who at least try to resolve complaints with BT Care.

Maybe these large corporations should be buying their customer relations training from the small businesses that know how to treat their valuable clients properly.

My good friend Nigel Morgan at Morgan PR frequently posts about large organisations ignoring the power of social media and how great an impact this can have on reputation if you ignore Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and the myriad of other social networks your shareholders could be exceedingly unhappy.

In some ways I’m grateful that my time waiting in for British Gas hasn’t been entirely wasted and I’ve written this blog post.

Five minutes before I left, Nigel rang me and suggested I bring my laptop so that he could tweet pictures as I took them, so dashing out of the door I grabbed what I thought I’d need.

Not knowing if the venue had wi-fi available I planned to shoot using a DSLR and upload to the computer, do a quick tweak and resize them and pass them on a USB stick to Nigel so that he could integrate them as the questions were answered.

What I hadn’t expected was that the venue had set up a stage in a drama studio with thick black curtains as a backdrop and incredibly high black painted ceiling, and very low lighting levels.

I immediately realised my chances of using available light were nil and with nothing to bounce flash off I had no alternative but to use flash directed straight at the speakers and any hope of including the audience would be even more of a challenge with the dark surroundings acting like a massive sponge, mopping up the light. Although not a new situation for me, I spent years of my youth crawling around potholes and caves and of course working in darkrooms, these sort of challenges make you think on your feet.

With the male members of the panel being traditionally dressed in dark suits achieving definition between them and the background was essential if disembodied heads were to be avoided.

Add to this the large bottles of water sitting on the desk in front of the panellists just waiting to reflect back at me every bit of light I threw at them I was not optimistic about the outcome of the evening.

But with some careful balancing of apertures and shutter speeds to make the most of any light there was and some gentle manipulation in Photoshop, I achieved my goal.

They say a picture paints a thousand words, but when it comes to books full of well-intentioned words, anyone who knows me well will tell you about my aversion to reading fiction.

It’s probably a hang back from school days when we were expected to read a certain number of fiction books during the holidays and the resulting detentions when you couldn’t answer questions on them once term had restarted.

I can confidently say that the last fiction I read was the third Harry Potter book, which I read to my younger daughter at bed-time.

Now I happen to believe that, being a commercial photographer it is essential to know about the product I’m photographing and on this occasion, who, I’m working with.

MacKenzie Smith on the sofa

Establishing a comfortable relationship with them is vital, if you really want to achieve the best and most relaxed photographs and of course building that essential ingredient – the magic of rapport.

To this end and in the interest of research, I decided I must put my prejudice about fiction aside and find out what this book is all about, so I began reading the first chapter, which was included in my brief.

After the first few sentences my imagination was sparked by the visual and sometimes graphic descriptions which appeal to my rather right-brained mind and I soon found myself abruptly halted by the end of the chapter and wanting to know more. So much so, that even without meeting the client, I have ‘liked’ the book on Amazon and pre-ordered it ahead of the September launch.

When I eventually met Mackenzie, it was obvious that he was going to make a great subject, but like so many people before him, he didn’t feel particularly comfortable being photographed and while he is destined to become a much photographed best-selling author, for now it was all new to him.

MacKenzie starting to enjoy himself

The greatest secrets of getting good pictures of anyone is not to be rushed, Nigel had allowed plenty of time to get these pictures, and also to try and take them in their own environment, whether it’s their office or home, these really are key.

My technique is simple, I get my subject to talk to me, while I fire off pictures, inevitably, there will be some bizarre expressions, which you can sometimes share with the client before deleting, although this can be risky as they may react badly and destroy their confidence.

After about half an hour the whole atmosphere changed, relaxation took over and the pictures improved. The plan had been to do some indoor shots and then try and get some exterior shots by the local river but when we arrived at Mackenzie’s office, it had been pouring with rain.

Now fully relaxed

The sky having cleared, we had the opportunity to start some outside pictures, and that heralded an almost Eureka moment; where he had been hesitant about the camera, suddenly, both Nigel and I noticed a change, Mackenzie was starting to enjoy being photographed and even stopped talking to pose, which ended the session with some really great shots which he has started to share on the Facebook page for Who Pays the Piper – you can also follow Mackenzie Smith on Twitter via @MSmith_Author.

With acquisition costs for new customers being one of the greatest expenditures for any business, finding a way to reduce these, is always welcome.

As Nigel frequently emphasises, “people buy people” and this is where social media is such a powerful tool.

Being a commercial photographer from Newbury, meeting local people face to face is important, so when I physically go networking, as I work the room, people frequently comment that they know me or, that they recognise me, even when it is very unlikely that we’ve met before.

It soon becomes clear that they know my face and often my name, and that can be directly attributed to one thing, my social media profile picture.

Once you recognise someone and can relate to them, you have begun the essential journey, called “building rapport”.

By this simple visual identification you have immediately overcome one of the greatest barriers to communicating with new people and can take advantage of this step on the ladder to getting to know more about the other person and conversationally introduce your business to them.

I believe your social media profile picture is vital in the way you present yourself on the various social media platforms, but it’s also essential that this image is congruent with your message; does the picture you use on Twitter really fit with the professional persona you present on Linkedin.

This is why I seriously advocate having different pictures for the various applications and having professional photographs taken can really enhance your business image.

The other important vehicle for promoting your business using the internet is by ‘blogging’ and Nigel explained how this can dramatically improve your website’s Google ranking when done regularly.

Blogging is just like publishing your own press releases, with the single most important difference that you are guaranteed publication. With clever support from your social media activities, your message can achieve far greater coverage than any traditional paper publication and if you happen to create a blog that captures the imagination of enough people it can become a massive viral entity, carrying your message beyond your wildest dreams.

The 50 people who joined me at Nigel’s presentation will have left with many stimulating thoughts and some significant calls to action and I look forward to many more social media followers and the opportunity to read some exciting new blog posts.